In general the relation of the experimental sciences to the question of life may be expressed thus: Question, “Why do I live?” Answer, “In the endlessly large space, in an endlessly long time, infinitely small particles are modified in infinite complexity, and when you understand the laws of these modifications, you will know why you live upon earth.”
In the sphere of the speculative sciences I said to myself: “All humanity lives and develops on the basis of spiritual principles, ideals, which guide it. These ideals are expressed in the religions, in the sciences, in the arts, in the forms of political life. These ideals are all the time getting higher and higher, and humanity is moving toward a higher good. I am a part of humanity, and so my calling consists in cooperating in the consciousness and materialization of the ideals of humanity.” During the period of my mental insipidity I was satisfied with that; but as soon as the question of life arose clearly within me, all that theory immediately went to pieces. Not to speak of that unscrupulous inexactness with which the sciences of this kind give out the deductions which are based on the study of a small part of humanity as general deductions; not to speak of the mutual contradictions of the different partisans of this conception as to what constitutes the ideals of humanity,—the strangeness, not to say stupidity, of this conception consists in this, that, in order to answer the question, which presents itself to every man, “What am I?” or, “Why do I live?” or, “What shall I do?” a man must first solve the problem, “What is the life of all humanity?” which is not familiar to him, and of which he knows only one tiny part at a tiny period of time. In order to understand what he is, a man must first know what all this mysterious humanity is, which consists of just such men as he himself is, who do not understand themselves.
I must confess, there was a time when I believed all
